by Clare Langley-Hawthorne
http://www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com/
http://www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com/
I’m trying to ignore the pervasive sense of doom and gloom drifting westward after the BEA in New York but I have to confess it doesn’t help when I’m in that ‘this is utter crap’ stage in my own writing. So instead of wrestling with the page my husband and I decided to watch Australia on DVD – an event we faced with some degree of trepidation – given what critics (including my own mum) have warned us about – that the film suffers from a serious case of ‘bloat’.
My own books have been accused by some of being too short (actually people have said ‘I loved it but write a longer book next time!’) – but when a story is done, it’s done and it’s extremely irritating to read books that have been puffed up and bloated by all sorts of unnecessary techniques that make you experience (usually about three-quarters of the way through) the sinking feeling that the book should, by now, be over. I call it the ‘Titanic’ effect because quite frankly three-quarters of the way through that movie, I was like ‘just sink already!’ (followed shortly thereafter by ‘just die already!’)
Some of the pernicious ‘bloat’ techniques for me are:
- Unnecessary description – I love gorgeous, evocative prose that creates atmosphere and sense of place. What I don’t appreciate is pages and pages of description that quite frankly as a reader I end up skipping. I subscribe to the Raymond Chandler approach where less, skillfully done, is best.
- Convoluted sub-plots and twists- the ones that don’t really add to the overall plot but seem to be merely a device to prolong the inevitable. If they involve secondary characters that I am not invested in (or care about) then it’s all the more yawn-inducing. Which brings me to…
- An unnecessary large cast of characters – the ones that sprawl endlessly and which serve only to pad out the book till it’s bursting at the seams. As far as I’m concerned unless you’re Dickens this is too hard to pull off; and
- Too many ‘themes’ and ‘issues’ that make you feel as though you suddenly stumbled onto a lecture series…or a non-fiction book.
So what are in your mind the worst offenders in ‘bloat-dom’?…what makes you think ‘enough already’ and realize that the books could have been done in say, 200 less pages…or in the case of Australia 2 hours less….
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Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Julie Kramer, Grant Blackwood, and more.